Wednesday, September 12, 2007

First off, believing that "most people are dumb" is an adolescent fantasy. Most people are average and want to get better. They just don't know how. What works in one area doesn't work in another area, and that dissonance causes them problems.

If you're a guild working on T4 content, take a WoW Web Stats log of your raid. Or take a look at one of the numerous WWS posts on the Raid and Dungeons forums. Over and over you will see the same mistakes. And it's not even "mistakes" like frost vs fire.

You'll see:- Hunters not using Steady Shot- Hunters missing shots- Rogues using Shiv instead of Sinister Strike/Backstab- Dagger rogues using Sinister Strike- Rogues missing attacks- Rogues using Eviscerate instead of Slice and Dice/Rupture- Warlocks not keeping DoTs up- Cat Druids not using Shred- Mages missing spells- Mages using many different spells instead of their best spells- Shadow Priests not keeping DoTs up

You'll see the same mistakes, again and again. And at some point, you have to wonder if there's a reason that all these different people are making the same mistake, and how things could be changed to keep them from making such systemic mistakes.

Also, I'm not saying that healers and tanks are perfect. It's just that our mistakes tend to have immediate consequences, and thus we try to correct them on the very next attempt.

(The fact that Paladins only have 2 healing spells, one of which is spammed on a tank, makes it pretty hard to have systemic errors. About the only one I can think of is paladins not using Lay On Hands.)

Healer/tank mistakes tend to be of the immediate, tactical variety, such as healing the wrong person, or BoPing a warlock with Moroe's Garrote instead of saving it for a healer/mage. The thing about tactical mistakes is that you realize the mistake quite soon after you make it. That "feedback loop" is there, and that makes it easier to improve.

Posted by
Rohan

37 comments:

Anonymous
said...

This still doens't explain the flamebait nature of your OP. It was not simply titled "Why are Players so Bad". You state in a round about way the DPS is a bunch of tards in general. It's really quite dissapointing compared to the usually high quality of your writing and ideas.

More than ever DPS now requires skill in raids and does have measurable results for failure. Talented DPS should not be expected any more than talented tanking or healing. If DPS can manage to keep up the heat on a target while still doing all the other tasks it needs to, they should be touted just as much as the tank who hold a mountain of aggro while mitigating, or the healer keeping the raid up during challenges.

Your offhand slights just reflect your inexperience with playing DPS skillfully. If you knew what you were talking about you would have the same respect for them.

What you are implying in your post is that any non tard can do great DPS and also juggle all the other factors. And you are outraged that you have so many tards not living up to your wishes. You're wrong. Good, talented, intelligent DPS can do this. Regular DPS will have trouble with it. Pat your skilled DPS on the back, rather than just scoffing at those with average skill.

Once you know what it takes to achieve it, you'll have more respect for it.

Once you know what it takes to achieve it, you'll have more respect for it.

I have mad respect for T4 dps who can crack, say, 900 DPS. DPS who rides the threatline are awesome.

But most DPS players, especially at the T4 level, are nowhere near that. I just think that asking for 600 DPS is not an excessive demand, and is more in line with basic competancy.

What you are implying in your post is that any non tard can do great DPS and also juggle all the other factors.

If "great DPS" is defined by 600 DPS or so, then yes, that is what I am implying.

Also, avoiding environmental hazards is not a great hardship. If it hasn't escaped your attention, us healers have to avoid the same hazards, only we have to watch 25 changing health bars at the same time.

Another intersting factor some mediocre DPS often neglects is the long term push against threat.

Here I mean riding close to the threat cap for a reasobable amount of time and holding back if need be at least at the start. You can save your big threat dump (vanish, soulshatter, invisibility, etc) for the most long term impact. For a longer fight this could be like 1/2 way or 2/3 through depending upon the fight. After the dump you can pretty much go balls to the wall on DPS until you start climbing back up into the danger zone again. After practice and experience with aparticular fight you can learn when to do the big dump to maximize this heightened DPS period.

Of course lower geared or poorly skilled DPS will never have to worry about the threat cap, so they can do thier semi-afk sleepy DPS the entire fight :D

As a healer who recently respecced for DPS after two years of raiding as two healers I can honestly say I agree with almost everything Coriel had to say in his original post. It is INARGUABLE that healers and tanks face different feedback. Groups can get by with bad DPS far easier than they can bad healers or tanks, this gives much less incentive and feedback for DPS. DPS'ers are not "tards", are not dumb people in of themselves, it's entirely environmental and incontestable. There's tons of bad healers and bad tanks, but relative to one another, healers and tanks are more skilled ON AVERAGE.

ON AVERAGE. You rogues, mages, locks, shadow priests reading this blog are not idiots who suck, the fact that you read wow blogs probably means you are mostly shining examples of your classes, but on average there is simply less feedback and incentive for your classes to improve, end of story.

"This still doens't explain the flamebait nature of your OP. It was not simply titled "Why are Players so Bad". You state in a round about way the DPS is a bunch of tards in general. It's really quite dissapointing compared to the usually high quality of your writing and ideas."

Where does Coriel fault the people who play DPS'ers at all? Both posts lay the blame squarely on game design.

While I agree to an extent that the OP's initial remarks may have seemed somewhat heavy-handed, he does make some good points. A poor DPSer is less likely to attract attention than a poor healer, because other DPSers can compensate for a lack of DPS on the part of a couple people.

Of course some of the general statements I saw in the original post were somewhat suspect. For example, trying to max hit rating for certain classes is not optimal, enhancement shamans are advised to avoid maxing hit rating in exchange for more crit and attack power because you get better returns after a certain point. There really aren't that many general DPS truisms anymore as there is enough variance in each class's mechanics to make such general advice less effective than it used to be.

Finally there is the fact that WoW is a game. People often have a general idea of their character's image, even on non-RP servers. While combat swords may do more DPS than any other rogue spec, it may not fit a player's image for their rogue. Warrior players may like the idea of rampaging with a big two-handed weapon rather than using two one-handers despite the fact that dual wielding is generally better DPS. A certain measure of min-maxing is necessary to progress but don't expect people to play something they don't enjoy just because it works better. A good number of paladins in my guild are ret pallies and we still let them raid despite the fact that most people scoff at ret DPS. Do they top the damage meters? Generally no but they and everyone else have fun, which is really what is most important.

I wish people would stop talking about spec. Spec doesn't matter as much as people think it does. Maybe Fire is better than Frost, or Combat Swords is better than Daggers, but it's a matter of a few percent, and is something for the theorycrafters to debate.

A Frost Mage doing 400 DPS is not going to vault to 800 DPS just by speccing Fire.

- If the tank isn't tanking, the healers die (and everyone else a few seconds later)- If the healer isn't doing at least a decent job of healing, the tank will die (and everyone else will shortly follow)

The DPS role is a much more subtle one. While yes, there are damage meters, people have the tendency to disregard their lower percentage. Tanking / healing mistakes are *much* more noticable, and much quicker to be fixed because of this. In early TBC endgame, a geared and intelligent group of tanks and healers can carry a group through some of Karazhan. Sure, DPS is important, but as you said, "Over and over you will see the same mistakes." I often hear the 'gear excuse', which is silly. I've known certain players to out-DPS those better geared than them. Even though it is 'just a DPS', there is definate 'right way' and 'wrong way.'

Backing away for a bit and looking at it as a game design question, I don't see the "lack of input for DPS" as a game design error or flaw. I see it as a game design choice. Perhaps that's because I played old-school games like Ultima 3 and 4, where there was virtually no feedback, almost everything had to be discovered, and there was no Internet to look stuff up (maybe you could buy a game guide, but it never occurred to us at the time). In WoW, if you want help there are many, many free ways to get it!

Of course, my position does imply that the finger of "blame" is pointed back at the player base... :) And after all, what can you expect from a pool of 9 million subscribers widely ranging in age, gaming experience, and seriousness about the game? There will be a WIDE range!

And as I said in a previous post, it's up to the players to figure it out why they fail when they fail. At the root, it's not much different than repeatedly failing a quest or a PUG wiping repeatedly on an instance boss - except that it involves more people (raid) and is a wall that stops further progression. So it seems like a big deal because unlike a quest (where you can level up or get a buddy or do a different quest) or an instance (come back later with a different PUG) a boss stopping raid progression leaves fewer options for solving the problem.

Agreed about spec. I mean... bad mouth ret all you want, but if a player wants to go ret, and they commit to being ret, I'll let them into my raid. If they want to go Boomkin, go for it.

IMO, those people who chose these "bad" specs are going to put a hell of a lot more effort into knowing their class and pushing that extra couple of percent out.

For instance, I was the pally officer for my guild, and one of my holy pallies approached me and wanted to go ret. I told him, sure, but only if you commit. He did, and he was ret for the next raid. He came in pretty low on the damage meters, near where the main tank was.

We did a couple of instances, got him some enchants, replaced his weapon (over the course of 1 week), and jumped to #4 on the charts. Over other rogues, mages, locks and such.

It's easy for dps to get lazy. Tanks and healers usually have to stay on top of things, and if they don't, they get yelled at. No one really yells at a mage because he ooms too fast or gets cleaved in half. If a healer gets cleaved in half, well... they catch some flak for it.

One of the posters in the previous thread hit on something I've been increasingly convinced of (apologies for not looking it up for proper credit: lunch break is short).

I'm starting to feel that the role of a casual-raiding guild has become "information source" as much as raid slot source. At least in my own experience, the people who don't want to read EJ every day (or don't have access) for the latest theorycrafting are my friends and peers. I find us increasingly becoming a channel for distributing a lot of these ideas - whether via unofficial class leads, or posts on our site, or homegrown "guides", or simple in-game chatter. I'm also starting to put more of our organizational resources behind this function.

No doubt guilds who'd done the hard(er)core raiding scene had previously identified this need - guild as info clearinghouse. But it's been a discovery for myself and our members.

A lot of this talk about DPS having no feedback or being able to get away with playing lazy, is really an outdated mentality. It may have been true when we had 40 folks raiding MC and only 20-30 were really doing he work.

But in 10 man KZ there is no room for even one sleeper (especially if it is not all on farm), and our raid leaders and class officers are on top of people everyone, tanks, healers AND DPS. If you are putting out 400dps as a ret pally you are going to get called out as dead weight. If you don't show improvement officers are going to have increasingly less patience with you. Just like a shitty tank or dumb healer, you are going to be asked to wake up or eventually get left out.

When you have fights like Curator, Aran, and stage 3 of the Prince, DPS has direct feedback to success or failure. It is INARGUABLE.

But when it is just 10 people (or even 25) it's easy to pick out the slacker. I'm usually in charge of whipping our melee DPS into shape, and when I am pulling the weight of 2 slackers I get pissed and let them know they are not performing adequately. If I see the trend repeating I look more closely at what they are doing and help them correct.

Maybe my guild is just wierd like that, but we don't let it slide. And we are just a casual guild. I imagine more bleeding edge folk are even less tolerant of sleepers.

Jason, you're the person who's looking at the meters and evaluating performance. You are the feedback loop, not the game.

If you weren't there, or someone wasn't performing your extra duty, would these "slackers" still be improving?

A lot of guilds don't do what you do, or have someone who's good at it. They don't run through meters or use WWS and evaluate performance. Heck there's a significant portion of the audience who sees damage meters as evil and useless (witness the comic posted above).

Well this might be splitting hairs but in a MMO I'm part of the game, as are all the social and leadership aspects that come out of being in a group.

I mean a tank can be a dumbass and clueless to results as DPS. He can sit there and spam taunt and sunder and hold aggro, but never shield block and get crushed. To him the healers just messed up and failed to heal him well enough. He's a dumb tard.

How is this any different then a dumb tard dps putting out crappy dps and thinking he did fine?

All of these tards get a wake up call from raid leadership and can either change or get left out of raids.

But again, how is lack of feedback a fault of the game?If I lose at tennis or chess or PacMan or Super Mario Bros., I don't get feedback as to what went wrong.Feedback virtually always comes from another player or a coach; it is not inherent within a game.IMO, WoW has no obligation to provide anything but a dead boss or a wiped raid group; anything else is gravy.

In chess I might sacrifice material in order to force checkmate - a beginner would never consider a move that obviously loses the Queen, but a master might see that such a move is the beginning of a forced combo that results in checkmate. An eye for a combo is the result of playing and studying and, at higher levels, coaching.

In Mario Bros. I might initially not know about a hidden block or a monster lurking just off the screen, but a veteran knows these things and uses timing and controller skills to avoid the hazards. But it may have taken a lot of falls into the pit and collisions with the monster to get that timing down just right.

In the same way, it might not be initially obvious that a Shadow Priest should keep up VT and SW:P. And what of SW:D, which is a powerful instant that damages the caster? Maybe the life returned by VE will allow an alert Shadow Priest who knows the battle to sneak in SW:D to increase overall DPS. On the other hand, that thought might not even cross the mind of another player.

But there is not a good way (that I can think of) for the game to suggest SW:D since it is a risk / reward scenario. It is possible that SW:D will be followed by an AOE from the boss before the life is regained, and the Priest goes down (with resulting loss of his DPS). And what if the game suggested how to maximize DPS - only to have DPS then steal aggro and wipe the raid (DPS just plain overdoes it, or doesn't notice that the tank is stunned and not generating threat, or a crit jumps threat over the threshold, etc)? There are enough factors involved that I think that WoW is wise to leave it to the players to figure things out.

Such a design is frustrating in failure - but quite rewarding in success.Just an alternate view... :)

I agree that this post seems a bit generalised but i agree that most dpsers can improve techniques, as can all players. It is down to class leaders etc to help their classes do the best.Samownall World of warcraft blog

Heh well there is an example of a poor DPS, unwilling to examine tactics, adapt and learn. If Eviscerate works better for you with your gear and talents, and has better dps results than rupture, great. But you should not be blindly doing it just because you'll do it all you want. That mentality is fine for easy stuff or raids on farm when you have the luxury to F around. But there is no room for that on tougher learning/progression raids.

Thank you to the anonymous poster who basically confirmed the problem with a lot of players.

I honestly have not a care in the world how people play until it starts causing problems in raids. And right now, people who are too close minded to even think about changing their playstyle to benefit the raid are causing a lot of problems.

We don't go out there and spend hours testing and pouring over WWS reports and brainstorming for over 1800 posts on EJ in a single class mechanics topic just because we want to ruin your game. We do it because we want people to progress and see endgame content, because we want to see it ourselves. You like eviserate, thats great, I love it on my 52 rogue alt as well. Ice over fire, more power to ya. If you can make it work in a raid then go ahead and do it. But as it is right now there are certain styles of playing that help a raid out much more than others. Back in vanilla it was easier to accommodate different playstyles because there were other people to help drag the group up. That is no longer the case. I've said it time and time again, but an endgame raiding guild can not afford dead weight anymore. And sadly thats what a lot of people who aren't willing to at least try out changes become.

As a combat mace rogue who usually does more pvp and has recently gotten into pve, I'd like to say thanks. I'm embarassed to admit I had forgotten about using Rupture on bosses. BUT, I would have to disagree with your "using Shiv instead of Sinister Strike" comment. Keeping Deadly poison on the offhand and Instant Poison on the mainhand lets me do way more dps and only using Shiv when I need to stack the dot count back up to 5. Of course, I could be taking your comment out of context and maybe that's exactly what you meant. Either way, good blog!

Hunter's not using Steady Shot is a sin? I barely ever use, and why should I when my Auto Shoot takes only 0.3 more seconds than Steady Shot? Between Arcane Shot, Multishot, Scorpid Sting, and Kill Command proccing, I don't have the time to be getting ready just for the instant I should hit that button before it messes up my timing. I do use it when we stun, daze or concuss a target, but Steady Shot is not in my regular rotation, nor do I think it should be. (Maybe if I wasn't BM, but I am.)

Okay, I should clarify the last post: the original topic was was end-game (T4 instances in this case) raiding. Steady Shot is useful in boss fights for the extra % of RAP that is applied to the shot. While it is a pain, it does help maxamize DPS.

Steady Shot does rely on how fast your weapon is Kruncs. The big selling point of the skill is the fact that it does not inturrupt your autoshot timer, meaning it is very easy to weave in between autoshots to maximize your dps with a slower weapon. I won't pretend to be an expert on hunters, but from what I've seen on my guild's WWS reports it is is very heavy usage on most boss fights from both our MM and BM hunters.

To the poster about hit rating for enhancement shammys, you are correct. After about 20-25% hit crit is better for overall dps. But until you reach that point its closer to worthless than hit. In addition I would like to say that ret pallys can put out a fair amount of dps if they have the gear, aggro issues are actually the main concern of retribution right now.

No offense, but kruncs is (perhaps unwittingly) serving as example of DPS players who don't know pretty basic aspects of their class. Steady shot is key for hunters. In my guild, steady is putting out nearly as much damage as auto-shot, especially for BM hunters. Our latest Reliquary kill: http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=xzi1t5ynk5huq

This isn't an isolated incident, and a cursory inspection of the EJ or even official hunter forums would reveal that for BM hunters, a spammable steady/auto/KC macro is the easiest way to maximize DPS. Yet clearly even some players who care enough about the game to read related blogs manage to miss these kinds of class fundamentals.

Dunno, I've just never bothered with it when grinding. And up until a month ago, I was never in a raid outside of a BG, so never cared about maximizing DPS. Thats a long time of going without, so I just can't seem to think of it as being vital when I've never needed it. I did know that they are on seperate timers, but as I said, I don't think of it when I am in the instances. Bad me. *uses his BBSoS on himself*

But you know what? I still out DPS my other members, so I don't think it is the greatest sin I could be commiting. Since we started actually raiding, I have been learning more about my class to be more DPS efficient. But I went from 1-68 pretty much soloing with my Hunter, so I don't feel too stupid on the stuff I don't know and haven't done. On one note, no one has ever complained about my DPS except that I steal agro if I am not careful enough, but never that I am not doing enough DPS.

@elairdI'm a great example of what not to be... thanks. *hangs his head in shame and goes to mix some Trogg Ale*

Heh, kruncs, don't take it personally. We can't improve unless we make mistakes. In the immortal words of G.I.Joe, "Knowing is half the battle."

Besides, you illustrated my point perfectly. You didn't need Steady Shot for grinding and even group play. It's only when you hit a raid DPS check that you would find that your DPS is lacking. And the fact that you beat your other members indicates the scope of the problem.

It's not just that one or two DPS don't know how to play, it's that the majority of them don't know how to reach their full potential.

TBH, feedback is important, but think of how time-constrained you are already.

Maximizing my paladin requires me to run instances to gear up, grind rep to get rewards, farm for money to afford enchants and other upgrades, and then if I raid with a "casual" raiding guild, I also have to run about 4-5 hours a night for 4 nights a week.

Thats only in-game. To keep my paladin up-to-date, I have to visit all the top theorycrafting sites and frequent the boards. This means I visit WOW-Europe forums, elitistjerk forums, worldofraids, and read through huge threads for a bout on average half an hour a day and even doing that have barely dented the sheer amount of info out there.

To keep up with raiding, I have to read up on bosskillers, watch boss videos, and visit elitistjerks and worldforaids again just to read how different guilds do the bosses.

This is a big time commitment and only for one toon.

Think of what raid leaders and class leaders have to do? Its simply too hard to provide good feedback to people even using WWStats because there are simply too many variables in the game to account for and provide reliable feedback on.

You claim that people lack feedback, but in the end, officers do less to improve a player than the player themselves. If you are motivated to change then you will independently pursue information yourself until you improved.

I topped the healing meters in my old guild by large amounts before, but when I joined a serious raiding guild I found myself behind the lead paladin by 20-30% during a raid.

Intrigued, I looked up more on my class and read through literally hundreds if not thousands of posts on ways to improve my play, and several addons later and with much play-testing I ended up beating him.

I have tried my best to help other healers, but in the end, educating yourself is really the only way to improve your play. I'm sure that hunter wanted to improve, but its clear he was simply too lazy to look up much of the information for himself.

If you spend 20-40 hours a week playing a game, you can spend 5 hours or so a week looking up information on your character.

PS. GOOD Paladin healers do not use only use 2 spells. All good paladin healers use around 4 different rankings of holy lgiht, flash of light, and have various sets of healing gear for different situations.

My point is, only a lazy player will be unable to figure out whats wrong. All the information is out there. A little googling and persisitence is all it takes to find it.

a "good" paladin healer that does not use 4 piece t5 should use TWO spells in raids, and will do extremely well with his TWO spells. downranking HL is largely pointless even with the libram and bol. even maintaining lightsgrace in a RAID environment is largely pointless. burst healing is the job of druids(swiftmend/ns), resto shamans(ns), and priests(pw:s, mend to a lesser degree). paladins do a bulk of the healing on meters by offering a sort of channeled renew. in a 5 man you could keep lights grace up as you are likely the only healer, but i a raid environment paladins should really not be using holy light much. a common problem i see in raids is the tank gets low, all the paladins switch to holy light to try to save the tank, and the 0.5-1 sec difference results in a dead tank.

gear i agree with. if you are with a shadow priest you should stack +heal and to a lesser extent crit. else, mp/5 and heal should dominate your gear in a raid environment. note that 1% crit is only worth 3.6mp/5 SPAMMING flash of light.

as for dps "skill", dps in general dont require SKILL in my opinion. a mage spams one button, and just needs to gear properly so his one button has maximum effect. sure there is invis/evoc/mana gems, but usage of those is largely a matter of a read about/taught routine. healers may mash one or two buttons as well, but their target changes constantly. a good healer needs to watch 25 health bars while being aware of the environment around him. its a balancing act between the two, combined with range/dispel considerations. a good healer anticipates damage before it arrives. you need to time your heals to end slightly after a swing, so you can cancel to save mana, or let it go. health bars do not update as fast as animations, so you need to track what animation your tank performs(dodge/parry/miss) and cancel/continue the spell accordingly. for dps, a mage for example is generally casting on one or two monsters. whether or not his spell hits the one or two targets he is assigned to is IRRELEVANT. the mage does not have to pay attention to the health bar of the boss for most cases, and can focus exclusively on pressing fireball(ok and maybe scorch) and watching the game view for any environmental hazards.

basically dps requires NO skill, and anyone can be told to gear for X hit, rest damage/crit, press x buttons in order and you will top meters. healing cannot be performed in the same way, and pushing your healing to the limit requires far faster reflexes and awareness than dps. and this is largely in fact by almost every tank death being blamed on healers.

sarcasm inc.

tank died because mob was alive too long and healer ran out of mana? healer problem, he needed more mana, pots probably. good example of this - heroic mech chain 3 pulls on the way to pathaleon.

people took a ton of cleaves/aoe damage and dps died in the process resulting in a wipe? healer problem, didnt keep the cleaved people alive. example - nethermancer in heroic mech.

the feedback is all the same. people died, and healers prevent people from dying. healer problem to most. any sort of "tank doesnt have enough gear" or "dps didnt do enough damage" cant be proven without WWS -comparisons- to other high performing raids. heals keep people alive, thats proven and hard to refute. after all, someone died and heals prevent that from happening?

the same largely applies to paladin tanks. wearing nearly full epics and dying to heroic trash, and someone telling me "damn paladins die so fast". note i had roughly 17.5k armor and 45% full avoidance(miss/dodge/parry) in my tank gear, as well as roughly 15k hp. too easy to blame things you cant prove.

I totally agree with the feedback idea. I see SO many players who just really don't know anything about how agility, crit, hit, spell damage, AP, etc., will affect their class, and some of them don't even know how to spec, and of course a lot of people don't know anything about cast sequnce either. Being an Arcane/Fire mage, I generally talk to all of my caster buddies about stats and such, but it seems like every day someone asks me what seems like a stupid question, then when I respond they're like...wtf? thats gotta be wrong. For example, casters always want to stack crit and spell damage (especially crit) instead of spell hit, not realizing that spell hit will increase their dps way more than crit or spell damage, and when I explain it to them, it's like their little brains just explode. I think it's because the spell hit is like an invisible increase in dps. You don't really see it (other than that you see less Resists), but it's much more exciting to see your crits doing a couple hundred more damage every time instead of seein your crits actually hitting 99% of the time instead of 91.

Anyways, I do the best I can with giving my guildies feedback, and it definitely seems to help. There are some people (like me and others in my guild) who just know their stuff (yeah, it took me forever to accumulate the knowledge), and some people who just do better when they're told what to do, and they can then execute and perform well in a raid. I can't imagine being the latter though, because it seems like just hitting buttons because thats what someone told me was the best way to dps/heal/tank would just be boring and stupid. And thats why I did the research, found out WHY I hit those buttons in that order, and then played around with other stuff to try and figure out a fun way to dps, CC, and still rock the dps charts.

Oh and I only have one post-Karazhan item, my tier 4 pants, and they're not as good as the Trial-Fire Trousers from the Opera Event (I can't believe I still haven't gotten them), and I can pump out over 1000 dps (1031 last night in Kara from Moroes through the Curator), but when I see someone doing 700 dps I definitely think they're doing well. And yet...I expect more anyways, just because I've gotten enough sweet gear to do 1000 dps in Karazhan gear.

Oh and who says mages are UP? Whatever.

It took me a LOT of hard work to get to the level that I am at, and I don't demand respect for that or anything, but anyone who has run with me just give me that respect. I don't see how saying that a lot of dpsers need feedback to improve is insulting dpsers. I think it's a fact, and whether you give yourself feedback by using WWS or Recount or something, comparing gear and stats with other characters, or if someone just tells you what to do and you do it...it's effective, and honestly, yes, anyone can hit the buttons in the right order, but to be an effective dps class in a raid situation, you gotta have skills, knowledge, and experience. So I give respect to those who have all of those things, and those who don't, I try to help them get those things, because they're most likely more than capable, they just don't know what they need to do.